Review: A TV Spy Thriller About Psychological Consequences of Going Undercover

In The Agency, human lives and personalities are tools to be abused by the state. The Showtime series stars Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, and Richard Gere as London-based CIA agents running complex undercover operations.

Fassbender’s character, Brandon Cunningham, has just returned from a six-year stint in Africa under an assumed identity, where he made personal connections and fell in love. Ordered to return to London and his old identity, he is expected to simply discard those feelings—to compartmentalize in ways that further the spy agency’s projects.

Meanwhile, the agency is training a new operative, a young woman named Daniela Morata (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), who they hope can infiltrate Iran through a scientific research program. Much of her training involves figuring out how to connect with people in ways that feel natural and genuine, and then exploit them.

Cunningham’s dilemma demonstrates the psychological consequences of long-term undercover work, while Morata’s shows the strange coldness required to be good at that work. The espionage game is a cruel and dehumanizing process that makes the individual subservient to a vast and unknowable state. The show seems to suggest that being a spy in service of international geopolitics means throwing away a part of yourself.

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